Sermon Tone Analysis

God’s Love Lives in Me # 14

1 John 4: 11-16

There can be no doubt that Jesus loved us.

His great love was proven as He bore our sin and endured the judgment we deserved as He hung on the cross.

He commands us in these verses to love one another as He has loved us.

Our love for one another defines us as followers of Christ.

John admonishes us again and again in this epistle to love one another.

Our text this morning once again offers this continual challenge.

Now I would agree this is easy preaching, but it is often hard practicing.

Our love for others is to be in line with the love Jesus had for us, a deep and sacrificial love.

I will admit I am incapable of offering such love within myself.

This is a tall order for any of us to properly carry out.

In fact, we cannot within ourselves.

As I read this passage, I realized again the enormity of God’s love for us and the varied benefit of His love in our lives.

His love enables us to love.

Were it not for His great love, we could never hope to love as He would have us too!

We sing the song: Love lifted me quite often.

I thought about titling this message after that wonderful hymn

Because This passage conveys that very thought.

God’s love lifted us in order that we could be pardoned from sin and live according to His will, including loving others.

But than I thought, yes God’s love lifted us out of our sin and He has given us that new heart to love others

But how are we to love others when they give no reason to love them

How are we to love like Christ?

Simple, we can love others because God’s love not only lifted us it lives in us.

I want to examine that truth, John reveals concerning God’s love as we consider:God’s love Lives in Me!

John revels three things to us regarding how we know that God’s love lives in us.

I.

The Exercise of God’s Love

(11-12) – Here John reveals the way God’s love is known and displayed before others.

We find that:

A. God’s Love is Practiced

(11) – Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

When we truly understand what God has done for us and how much he loves us, we realize we have no other option but to love one another.

That’s why John as gone to such great lengths to define love for us before he exhorted us to love.

You can’t love as you ought until you understand how God has loved you!

The word “so” translates a greek adverb meaning “so intensely”

If God “so” loved us we ought to love one another.

Focus on that little word “ought” in verse 11.

It means obligation.

Some Christians view loving others all the time as optional.

Love is not optional; it’s an obligation.

We are under moral obligation to love one another.

The expression of our divine duty is, “we also ought to love one another.”

If the greatest commandment is to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbor as ourselves, then the greatest sin is not to do it!

God-like living demands God-like loving.

if you are going to live like God than you must love like God

John says, “We also ought to love one another.”

This is the divine imperative based on divine logic.

If we have really come to know God in salvation, our Christian life will be the outworking of the truth that we claim to believe.

There is a problem: some Christians are difficult to love.

I read this while preparing for this message,

“To dwell above with saints I love, that will be glory.

But to dwell below with saints I know, now that is a different story.”

Its funny, but sometimes thats how we all feel.

But our love for others should grow out of our love for God and His love for us.

Our love for others is not dependent upon like or on arrgrement.

Through Jesus, we can love those that we do not agree with.

I can just picture the scene in the Upper Room with Jesus in John 13 when he gives them the new commandment.

Peter looks over at John and thinks, You mean I have to love that dreamer, that guy who has his head in the clouds?

John looks at Peter and thinks, You mean I have to love that loudmouth?

Matthew looks at Thomas and thinks, You mean I have to love that skeptic?

Thomas looks at Matthew and reflects, I have to love that tax collector?

Can you imagine what went through the minds of those men when Jesus gave them the new commandment to love one another?

How can you love someone if you don’t like them?

Easy!

We do it to ourselves continually.

Sometimes we feel foolish, stupid, or wicked.

But we can still love ourselves.

John 3;16 tells us about how God’s love for us is so great that he overcomes all the many reasons he could give for not loving the sinful people we are.

The question for us is this: if God has bestowed such love on us, will we overcome all our petty reasons for not loving one another?

B. God’s Love is Perfected

(12) – No man hath seen God at anytime.

If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

In v.12 John is making a statement about how our love for others fulfills three important functions.

1.

Our love for others is evidence that God is real v.12 a

No man has ever seen God except through Jesus, so just as God was incarnate in Christ, and everyone could see and sense the presence of the invisible God in the character, conduct, and conversation of the Lord Jesus, even so God is now indwelling us.

Therefore, people ought to see Him in us by the way we display what He is—love! and when we display Him by our love for one another He is made real to those that would otherwise disbelieve.

2. Our love for others is evidence that we are of God v.12 b

Possessing genuine love for one another is a mark of one’s salvation.

If we genuinely possess that love for others, we are assured that God dwells in us.

Genuine love is a by-product of our salvation.

3. Our love for others is evidence that God’s love is perfect v.12 c

His love (God’s love for us; His kind of love) is “perfected,” brought to complete maturity.

It reaches its intended goal.

John’s point is twofold.

First, I can love others as God loves me because He lives in me.

And second, His love will reach its intended goal, which is that I will love others as He loves me.

I am glad the Spirit inspired John to give us that last statement: His love is perfected in us.

Have you ever struggled with love?

Does it seem some are easier to love than others?

Surely we all have dealt with these issues.

I know I have.

This gives me hope and comfort.

As I grow and mature in the Lord, walking in fellowship with Him, His great love is being perfected in me.

He helps me love as He loves.

He helps me overlook the faults and failures of others, bringing me to a place where I can love as He loves.

I certainly have not arrived, but I rejoice His love is being perfected in me even today.

II.

The Experience of God’s Love

(13-14) – Here John speaks of the experience (hereby Know) of love we share with God and the great benefit it has for us.